Goodbye Stranger
by frozen-delight
Summary: You stand there staring after them, long after the taillights of the Impala have disappeared into the distance, and the assurances "You're family" have faded away into the comfortable, easy lies they like to tell strangers. [Cas-centric tag for 10x20 "Angel Heart". Cas/Dean (mostly one-sided). Non-linear storytelling, second person POV.]


This story was partly inspired by the gorgeous pics Jensen and Misha posted, plus there's a reference to the incredibly slashy deleted scene from 9x10.

Unbetaed, apologies for any mistakes.

* * *

**Goodbye Stranger**

You're sitting in a diner with a handsome friend. He buys you coffee even though you don't drink it, sprawls across from you in the booth, laughs (at you, probably, but it doesn't matter, not when the corners of his eyes crinkle and the cheap wooden table reverberates with the sound); you soak in his presence and think you might love him.

The next day he takes off to reunite with his brother, leaving you to search for your Father alone. As the dust that his screeching tires blow up settles into the folds of your tie, you remember how he helped you straighten it with nimble fingers which left your vessel's skin tingling with a strange, prickly sensation where they brushed against the throat.

o0o

"Goose bumps," the newly mortal (_humanized_, you would have called it once upon a time, before you engaged with and learnt the true meaning of humanity) Metatron blathers, "creepy… and yet arousing."

You wish you had no idea what he was talking about.

o0o

You can feel Dean's pulse race beneath his damp skin as you pin his hands above his head with one hand and use the other to drag your nails over his nipples. He arches up against you, biting down on his lip, hard enough to draw blood. His eyes are squeezed tight shut. Even if they were open, you don't think they would see you.

"Sorry," he pants, his breath quick and shallow, and you don't ask what he means (the angel who tricked him, Sam, Kevin, this whole mess that your lives have become); but you can tell that he's asking for punishment, and not for forgiveness.

Afterwards, when you survey the chest you marked and lick a droplet of sweat off his navel, causing him to shiver lightly under your palms, you suddenly wish you could have done this when you were still human.

"Who wants to be a stupid, stinking, emotional pile of meat?" Crowley will scoff not a day later when you're back on the road, looking for the angel, looking for Sam, a purple mark behind Dean's ear the only visible reminder of the moment you shared. You would tell him that there's more to being human, if you didn't have an inkling that he already knows.

o0o

"I'm sorry," Hannah says, barring your entrance to Heaven, and you can hear the implicit _We don't need you anymore. _I_ don't need you anymore._

She is all kindness and concern, and that only makes it worse.

o0o

You've mastered the art of walking through stranger's dreams. But you're a stranger to the narrative of your own life, wandering around aimlessly in search of a golden thread, without the wisp of sense or direction, chasing phantoms, stumbling into one nightmare after another.

_And now something wonderful is going to happen, for me and for you. I want you to live this new life to the fullest. Find a wife. Make babies. And when you die and your soul comes to Heaven, find me. Tell me your story._

Metatron's words keep echoing in your head even after you've managed to block out Angel Radio. You don't do what he told you to, but not to spite him. Simply because you can't.

Your story is one of embarrassing dates and bloodthirsty hookups, of accidents with the slush machine and fumbles with toothpaste, of strangers' kindnesses and a friend's cold, "Buddy, you can't stay."

o0o

From time to time you catch Sam looking at you expectantly as he pushes his research books away with a sigh. But he never tells you what he wants you to do, and you don't know how to ask.

Dean rarely looks at you these days.

o0o

For the fraction of a second Claire stares at you in wide-eyed hope, wishing you to be someone else. Briefly you entertain the idea of ripping out the remainders of your stolen grace and pretending you really are her father. But then she already averts her gaze, realizing it's only you, and you're not sure why you ever expected anything else. A tiny morsel of your grace resonates inside her, a token of the day you possessed her to coerce her father into submission and took him away from his family a second time, damning you even before you open your mouth.

"I'm sorry," you say.

"No. You feel guilty," she corrects you. A smattering of black stars decorates the inside of her wrist. You don't know what it means. "There's a difference."

It's only after you've watched her shrink away into nothingness in the rearview mirror of your car that you realize there might also be a third explanation, something that's not quite remorse, and not quite guilt either: You feel lonely and lost, no different than the little girl whose prayers you callously ignored.

o0o

"You made an exception for me," Dean states, voice strung tight. It's a demand and a plea, and you can feel it reverberate below the roots of your wings, nestling where hundreds of prayers and thousands of tragic fates have previously failed to reach.

The words slip out before you even dare to think them, and you see him freeze under their blasphemous impact: "You're different."

o0o

In Enochian there is no expression for _to make all the difference_. Your kind was never meant to value distinctions.

"She's not exactly your family, but she's close enough," Sam says of Claire, and it might not translate well into your Father's language, but it translates into your own experiences easily enough.

You think of the brothers and sisters up in Heaven who won't acknowledge you as their own anymore.

You think of the two brothers you've abandoned them for. They would die for you in a second. But they're wrapped up in each other, in their history and grief that you can't share any sooner than their blood, and on some days you sit staring at your phone, waiting for a call that never comes.

You think of everyone who ever came to you for guidance, and stepped away more of a leader than you'll ever be yourself.

You wonder if _close enough_ is all you'll ever be, and all you'll ever have.

o0o

"What's honorable about a miniature bar in a motel room?" you can't help but wonder out loud, momentarily distracted from your latest mission by eight plain letters that seem to embody all the frisky mysteries of human life that you still haven't even begun to grasp.

"Everything," Dean replies, and it's not the answer you were looking for, but your face still splits into a smile.

Later, when your head is ringing with the stories Metatron crammed into it, when Dean wrenches his arm out of your grasp under Sam's silent, worried frown, when every corner of the universe seems to spell fresh trouble, and you have no idea what to do but break open a bottle of Jack and follow the path Metatron wants you to take, you remember Dean's reply and think you might actually get it.

You stand there staring after them, long after the taillights of the Impala have disappeared into the distance, and the assurances _You're family_ have faded away into the comfortable, easy lies they like to tell strangers.

o0o

Dean looks at you like he's never seen you before and something inside you shrivels and dies.

His eyes are sharp, cold shards of bulletproof glass, his words "You didn't trust me." full of rage and hurt. He's faced monsters with greater warmth, and you know it.

You have no idea how to fix this.

Google advises you to accompany your apology with a bouquet of flowers or another thoughtful gift. So you go shopping for pie and end up breaking Heaven.

o0o

"I'm not a hammer," you confess to Dean, studying the hard lines of his jaw as he watches the oblivious children on their swings, oblivious to the doom they narrowly escaped.

The words taste unfamiliar on your tongue. You're speaking a language that's not your own in more senses than one.

You don't know why it feels so important to say it and you're not sure he understands.

o0o

"What you're doing for Claire … helping her find her mom… it's good. It's a good thing," Dean comments on your latest endeavor to rewrite the Novak family history (_forever loath to quit the horror genre_, your internal Metatron supplies) in a tone that clearly says the contrary. Never one to mince words, he then cautions you, "You're not anything to her except a constant reminder of someone that's gone."

It probably shouldn't surprise you that Dean of all people has spotted the selfishness behind your Samaritan quest long before it becomes evident to you. _Kindred spirits_, Sam called you once, with an anxious little smile.

The words manage to hurt in the way you've learnt only the truth does.

"Going at it alone, that's no way to live," Sam volunteers more kindly on the same topic, and when you watch Claire leave, pride and relief intermingled with something like regret, you understand that he wasn't talking just about her.

o0o

Watching your first cartoon you reached the conclusion: _The bird represents God. And coyote is man, endlessly chasing the divine, yet never able to catch him._

This time, sitting beside Dean, pretending not to see his clenched fists, coaxing his gruff features into a smile by laughing at all the wrong places, you think the cartoon might actually capture the story of your life – always chasing for something, a mission, a sense of belonging, family, love, yet unable to catch up, unable to keep up. The idea seems not nearly as hilarious.

o0o

You're cold and hungry, the well-stocked fridge and delicious water pressure of the Bunker already a distant memory. A trash can you search yields no edibles, but your hand closes around a dirty old paperback and when you pull it out, the yellowed cover stares back at you like a long-lost friend. You huddle against the dry brickwall of a building close by, and start reading. The familiar cadences of Chuck's bombastically awkward prose wash over you and with every line of dialogue your heart aches a little more with how much you miss Sam and Dean.

_They don't need you, not like you need them_, Azazel sneers on the page, leaning into Dean's personal space in what Chuck describes as _a disturbing parody of fatherly affection that punched the breath out of Dean's straining chest_, and you find that you can relate.

o0o

"Goodbye Castiel," Hannah says all too soon and leaves you to take her vessel home to her husband. She didn't walk the earth nearly as long as you did, but high-rider that she was, she didn't need to be thrown into an apocalypse to figure out the workings of free will and humanity. All it took was an awkward kiss, a shy press of hands, and she'd outpaced you by miles.

She's gone before you get a chance to ask, "So what happens now?"

Involuntarily, another wise sister's words come back to you_. It's time to think for yourself._ Five years are nothing next to the millennia you've existed, and yet you still wish you'd achieved more during that fingerbreadth of time than to land back on square one.

Caroline doesn't take leave of you, just climbs out of the car on shaky legs, and you think you might actually prefer that. You've never liked goodbyes.

o0o

Dean's face is closed-off, ready to plunge you into a universe of chaos, an atonal symphony of farewell. Defiance, fear and resignation lurk in the shadows under his eyes, making you want to shake him and beat him into optimism. Except that you've already tried that, and failed. His split lip and busted cheek bear witness to the hurt and disappointment still raging inside you.

Beneath all the layers of righteous fury, however, hides something else that you can't quite identify, something that has nothing to do with Michael and Lucifer, with the dooming apocalypse and with what you think the Winchesters might owe you. It's a quiet ache, almost gentle, like an echo to the palpable despair of Dean's broken, anguished soul.

_What you're feeling_, a voice in your head remarks that sounds firm and knowing like your sister Anna, _it's called love_.

If Sam weren't standing beside you, full of confidence and zest for action, you might brush your fingers over the cheek you marred, and soothe the dull burn of Dean's lip with the tip of your tongue.

Instead you carve ancient Enochian symbols into your chest and blast yourself into a thousand smithereens.

Of course you come back, _again_, but the Father who won't let you die also refuses to give you more purpose to live.

o0o

"You're obviously not an angel of the Lord," Metatron says, and you know he's right. "Who are you now?" he wants to know, and you don't have an answer.

You get your wings back, broken, frayed, and it doesn't change a thing.

Every gap in your sparse feathering is a question mark, and endless yearning squats in the cracks of your ancient bones.

o0o

In another life he might stay with you, if only for a day. There's a beautiful alley close by, you could take a walk there and watch the sunset together, arm in arm. He might laugh at you and call you a girl, but he'd stay and that would be all that mattered.

In this life you watch him drive away with his brother, leaving you behind in yet another motel parking lot, as though you still had a life and a home of your own to get back to, as though you still had a mission beyond waiting for the next phone call when they might need you again.

It's long after the Impala has disappeared out of sight that you climb behind your own steering wheel, release the handbrake and put the car into gear. You hit the road and figure it doesn't matter if you only decide tomorrow where you want to go next.

The empty highway stretches endless ahead and you drive.

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Thanks for reading. Feedback is warmly appreciated.


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